we know what we are (but not what we may be)
by narrowskies
Summary: Patrick Jane picking up the pieces in the two years after Red John's death. /or, a new beginning in seven acts. -Jane/Lisbon- Enjoy!


A/N: I WROTE SOMETHING? SOMETHING I'M ACTUALLY PUBLISHING? FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A YEAR? GaSP!

No, but, yeah, but, I just have a lot of emotion invested in The Mentalist. It's the second worst thing to happen to me after Supernatural. This fic possibly makes no sense and I apologize for that.

Lyrics Cred: Let Her Go - Passenger, Day Old Hate - City and Color, Sunset Soon Forgotten - Iron & Wine, Amsterdam - Daughter, Broken - Lauren Hoffman, Just A Boy - Angus and Julia Stone

Credit to his lordship Billy Shakes for the title.

I own nothing.

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we know what we are (but not what we may be)

. . .

**i. well, you only need the light when it's burning low**

You run from the park.

It's funny, because Rigsby's been trying to convince you to go for jogs with him for years and now it's all you can think about, your feet pounding on cobblestone, pavement, linoleum.

You run until you reach the airport and even then, you move in quick, furtive motions, designed to be unseen and unnoticed as you slip a hundred dollar bill into the pocket of the man at the ticket desk and duck into the room hidden just to his left.

Twenty minutes later you are on a flight to the Falkland Islands and you are still running. There is Rigsby's voice in your ear, extolling the virtues of a daily exercise regiment while Grace laughs and Cho scoffs and Lisbon snarks and you fall asleep to the sound of them, the last thing you can remember ever making you want to even consider standing still.

**ii. and isn't it great to find you're really worth nothing**

Port Louis is hot like you cannot believe.

It takes you two days to settle in a hotel. You're so used to them now, the rich colors of the bedroom walls and the cheap shampoo bottles in the bathroom.

You decide to take a shower almost immediately after checking in, tossing your meager belongings on the twin bed and tugging off your clothes until all you can feel is heat spilling down the bare skin of your back, trailing down your legs. Dirt and sweat and blood melt away until there's only you in that shower, enjoying the water pressure and the smell of the supplies strawberry-scented shower gel.

You dress in a pair of khakis and an overpriced t-shirt you bought from the hotel gift shop. Somewhere between the hallway outside your room and the elevator, you slip a pair of sunglasses on, cheap plastic digging into the bridge of your nose; you become a tourist for the first time in your life. It's the first thing you've ever been that doesn't feel like a costume.

No one gives you a second glance. You spend two weeks there, eating eggs with orange juice every morning without fail and you think every morning about your daughter and the sound of her beside you at the breakfast table, noisily munching on sugary cereal, more beautiful than anything in the world, and you smile so brightly and suddenly, your waitress almost drops the check that first day.

You carry around a Polaroid, but don't take a single picture. You see the beaches and the gardens and feel sand underneath your feet and smell salt in the breeze. You don't need a picture to remember any of it.

Still, on your last day in Cerito, you take dinner by the beach. Music streams softly past you and a man and woman dance slowly nearby in a patch of sand, like they are in their own world. The sun sets behind them and before you can think, your hands are up, snapping a picture of them, their silhouettes against a falling star.

When you get back to the hotel, you stare at the complimentary pad of paper they leave on every side table of every room thinking of all the words you haven't said to all the people you didn't leave behind until you can't stand it anymore.

You find yourself ringing the lobby to find out what time tomorrow you can check out. When you go, the man working in the lobby tells you, "Good bye, Mr. Trent," and you laugh, forgetting, just for a moment, that it isn't your real name.

**iii. be this sunset soon forgotten**

At around midnight, you pull over in the middle of nowhere.

Snap a picture of a cow in the middle of a pasture in the middle of South America in the middle of nowhere. Know that when you get the pictures developed you will not be able to make out a single thing, but, still, you'll know exactly what you're looking at.

You walk for a mile and then walk back another mile. You draw a smiley face in the dirt and then brush it out just as quick.

Fall to your knees in the grass and watch the stars. You don't know what you're looking for up there, you never have. When you wake up, disoriented and dirty, the sun is rising over the horizon. Remember the day you went blind and then, blinking away tears you can't explain, feel the energy of a new day wash over you until you are back in the car and down the road, gone again.

**iv. i've been thinking i should see someone**

You go to see a psychiatrist once.

He's young, only twenty six, going from the style of his hair and the model of his car. When you lay down on the couch in his office, brushing a hand over your face until you can cover your eyes, he asks you if you're happy.

"I don't know," you tell him honestly, the most honest you've been with a psychiatrist in your life. There's no need to lie, not like with Sophie, or with the CBI's hacks.

"That's okay," Dr. Alvarez says, smiling softly and you think, maybe, maybe it is.

**v. but that's a feeling that's fading, and i'm closing the door**

You leave your wedding ring in a deposit box in Ceritos.

Angela would have approved, you think. Like spilling ashes into the ocean was someone else's last dream, she wanted to be the corner of a faded photograph and the lines of a forgotten map, she wanted to be someone's imagination. She used to muse before bed that she wished you were a poet.

Sometimes you love her so fiercely it's like you're on fire. Today, you love her softly, wrapping her up in a silk scarf and leaving her behind like a sonnet.

It's nice, walking away and down to the beach, thinking about the color of her hair when the light hit it just right. She is no longer a ghost that you carry around, but a memory and it's alright, for the first time, it is alright.

**iv. girl, you make me want to feel**

Lisbon picks him up from the airport.

"I should arrest you right here," she tells him, but she's smiling. He knows because he once memorized the shift of her skin and muscle when her lips turn up and once he learns something, he never forgets.

He doesn't say anything, just moves slowly, deliberately. His hands find the bare skin of her arms and he pulls her against his chest and stands as still as he can.

"I have immunity," he tells her, maybe a week, or a month, or a century, or just two years of running that have left him more breathless than anything, later.

"That's never stopped me," she says, grinning bright enough to blind him again.

Later, he'll hand her a stack of photographs and she'll squint down at the darkest one, ask incredulously, "Why did you take a picture of a cow eating grass at night?" and he will laugh so hard he forgets to cry.

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Please don't favorite without reviewing.

Always,

Summer


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